Lord Theo made his message clear last week on the State of the Cubs. (See previous post).
Now, minion GM Jed Hoyer was on the Kaplan radio show last week.
On trying to win via free agency: “Well I think if
you look at the way baseball has evolved and become a younger man’s
game, and look at the playoffs and the teams in the playoffs you can see
it’s much less about (buying wins) than ever before. Look at the teams
the last two nights with the Royals and Pirates. Those teams are built
from within. The Giants have a big payroll but their talent is
homegrown. You can’t do this through free agency anymore. It’s an
out-of-date look at how to build a team now. … It’s an out-of-date
philosophy on team building.”
On what pieces the Cubs are looking to add in free agency:
“Theo said the other day that free agency is not for the faint of
heart. You go into free agency knowing that 80 percent of players go to
the team with the highest bid, and if there’s a lot of teams bidding,
the bidding can get really high, and well beyond what you expect. No
doubt there are a lot of risky investments in free agency. One of the
things we think about as we build our team is we will have a lot of
really young and inexpensive position players, so there’s a portfolio
aspect of looking at your team. If you get a ton of value out of
pre-arbitration players on offense, you can look at it and afford to go
out and find some pitching if you don’t have that in the system. In
general it’s rare to have no weakness in your farm system. It’s rare to
cover every hole, so the area you want to pursue in free agency is to
complete your team and figure out what you couldn’t do through the farm
system and through the draft. You can complete those things in free
agency, and that’s how we look at it.”
On if chairman Tom Ricketts will spend if there is an opportunity to make a splash:
“No question. Tom has been so patient and so good to us as we’ve come
to him and talked about our process and plan. He’s totally on board. The
beauty of having an owner like this is he wants the team to be in the
family forever, so let’s take the time to build it the right way so we
can become one of those organizations everyone looks to. It’s clear they
have a long vision in what they’re doing. When an owner has that
vision, things almost always work out. Having patience in this business
is almost always rewarded.”
On the criticism that the process is taking too long, and players like Javy Baez don’t look ready:
“I think it’s expected. People put their Cubs hats on in the morning,
and you’re a Cubs fan and you want to see the team win. When it’s not
winning you get frustrated. That’s the nature of being a fan. We’re more
likely to be patient than the fan base. And I think on the whole the
fan base has been really patient. But not having people be critical of
what we’re doing would be unusual.
“As far as Javy goes, we have all the faith in the world that Javy
will make the adjustments, but I can guarantee almost all the guys we
bring up will go through struggles, and their ability to work through
those and make adjustments will impact whether they’re a big leaguer or
not. At some point Jorge Soler will go through a slump, and when it
happens people will question his swing or whatever is making him
unsuccessful. … You can make a lot of really bad mistakes in this game
by looking at 21- or 22-year-old players and determining after a short
while they won’t make it and giving up on them. We believe in these guys
and we’re gonna allow them some playing time and, potentially, some
rough patches. Ricky (Renteria) is very patient with these guys. He
knows these guys will struggle and he’s willing to go through that pain
to get the reward at the other end. As far as Baez, it’s not the last
time one of our guys will struggle, and that’s part of living with young
players.”
>>>> Whoa, whoa whoa - - - MLB is a "young man's league?" "You can't build a team via free agency any more!" You have to have homegrown talent. What a bulldozer full of crap: what teams are in the playoffs? The Dodgers, Angels, Tigers - - - all spend huge dollars in free agents and take huge payroll risks. This is a clearer message than Theo's ramblings: THE CUBS ARE NOT SPENDING MONEY ON FREE AGENTS.
The Cubs value "pre-arbitration" players even in free agency which means FRINGE JOURNEYMEN like Valbuena, Ruggiano, Kalish,
the types that got the team to a rousing last place finish. The reason:
cost control. A first year arb player may get 25% of his FMV; a second
year guy 50% and third year guy 75%. And you don't have to sign them
long term and risk them getting injured on a year to year arb program.
If
Ricketts wants to own the team "forever" then that really means he
needs to save his money, cut down the debt and find more money sources
besides baseball. So if he is "on board" with the plan to just get young
players, then the plan is not to get old FA players = saving money. So much so, that the team is willing to let their prospects "go thorough rough patches" of pure suckage instead of winning with veterans.
Steve Rosenbloom is right: the Cubs keep talking down to fans as being stupid.
